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Facebook Flat-Out 'Lies' About How Many People Can See Its Ads, Lawsuit Alleges (theregister.co.uk)
A new lawsuit claims that Facebook exaggerates how many people can see its ads, thereby defrauding advertisers. "In other words, it is alleged not quite as many eyeballs are seeing Facebook's ads as its salespeople charge for," writes Thomas Claburn via The Register. From the report: In a complaint filed on Wednesday in a US district court in Oakland, California, plaintiffs Danielle Singer and her company Project Therapy, LLC claim the Potential Reach and Estimated Daily Reach figures that Facebook provides to advertisers are wildly inflated. As an example, the complaint claims that Facebook's purported Potential Reach among 18-to-34-year-olds in each U.S. state is greater the actual population of 18-to-34-year-olds in each of those states.
"Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, among 18-34 years-olds in Chicago, for example, Facebook asserted its Potential Reach was approximately 4 times (400 per cent) higher than the number of real 18-34 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Chicago," the complaint states. And in Kansas City, the complaint asserts, the number provided by Facebook was 200 per cent higher than the actual number of 18-to-54-year-olds with Facebook accounts in the area. What's more, the court filing contends that former Facebook employees, described as confidential witnesses, have acknowledged that Facebook is fine with inflated numbers. The attorneys representing Singer and her biz, which supposedly spent over $14,000 on Facebook ads, are seeking class-action certification in order to represent other affected Facebook advertisers. According to the complaint, "a former Facebook employee who worked in the infrastructure/mapping team stated that those who were responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the Potential Reach at Facebook were indifferent to the actual numbers and in fact 'did not give a sh--.'" They also said the "Potential Reach" statistic is "like a made-up PR number."
"Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, among 18-34 years-olds in Chicago, for example, Facebook asserted its Potential Reach was approximately 4 times (400 per cent) higher than the number of real 18-34 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Chicago," the complaint states. And in Kansas City, the complaint asserts, the number provided by Facebook was 200 per cent higher than the actual number of 18-to-54-year-olds with Facebook accounts in the area. What's more, the court filing contends that former Facebook employees, described as confidential witnesses, have acknowledged that Facebook is fine with inflated numbers. The attorneys representing Singer and her biz, which supposedly spent over $14,000 on Facebook ads, are seeking class-action certification in order to represent other affected Facebook advertisers. According to the complaint, "a former Facebook employee who worked in the infrastructure/mapping team stated that those who were responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the Potential Reach at Facebook were indifferent to the actual numbers and in fact 'did not give a sh--.'" They also said the "Potential Reach" statistic is "like a made-up PR number."
This can't possibly be true! A major corporation would never ever lie about a completely unverifiable "fact" just to make money!
Sounds like a potential reach around!
Oh wait... Chicago
Honestly just concerned about how they felt the need to clarify '4 times' equals 400%. Mabye that's why they got away with this for so long...
Smart crooks at least make sure the numbers are somewhat plausible. They probably started small and found that nobody actually noticed. Then they just kept inflating the numbers, completely unaware that there is a hard upper bound. It really does not get much more stupid than this.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Converting "times higher" to a percentage is (n - 1) * 100%, so 4x higher is actually 300% higher.
For extreme example of this, consider 1.01 times higher, which is only 1% higher.
Before fuckwits like swillden swoop in on this one let me help you. You donâ(TM)t not want to be seen in this conversation with 50% of your revenue coming from phantom clicks.
seriously, lets get real.
No argument there.
Nominates story for Captain Obvious award.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
And the rest of us got lied to.
Back in the 80's, fake London newpapers would call advertisers and offer them advertising print runs in the "Islington & Highgate Gazette" of 50,000. Newspapers like this were fake, non-existent, they had plausible sounding names but little else. They'd ring advertisers seen in real media, get bookings, print off 50,000 copies, send one to each of the advertisers, and one for their lawyers, then pulp the rest. Then the same company would ring them about advertising in the "Chiswick and Hounslow Courier" with a print run of 100,000.... The Newspapers were a few stock articles and mostly adverts from companies suckered in.
The BBC, set up a anonymous facebook page with zero advertising and zero reason for people to like it, and they got loads of likes from across the world. What struck me is how Facebook must be behind that, because how else would the people in third world countries *know* about the new pages, let alone who would *pay* them to like these pages? I assumed it was to puff up FB's numbers prior to its IPO.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/29505104
Facebook claimed it was companies paying third parties to like the page to make it more popular.... but the BBC DID NOT PAY OR TELL ANYONE ABOUT ITS 'Virtual Bagel' empty FB page. So Facebooks explanation about these likes seems false.
So now you're telling me they lie to advertisers and the lies are whoppers, easily verified to be fake.... well yeh, but FB were never prosecuted for the alleged securities fraud last time, because there was no proof, and they won't be this time, because they'll pretend a 'reach' number is some vague metric without legal meaning.
Just like the newspapers I mentioned.... they never said "sales of 50000", they said "print run of 50000" .
ublock origin and FB purity for the win...
Welcome to the internet advertising world!
The Zuck lied to us? It cannot be! (And a shot rings out in the wilderness^H^HNO CARRIER
Spreads beyond Hollywood. News at 11. Frank Zappa was right - again.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
... Who are all these millions of mystery people hiding out in the Midwest? Inquiring minds want to know!
well, the potential reach is max number. made up.
anyhow. you buy views/clicks, its not like a tv broadcast ad where you buy a slot based on estimated viewers.
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While I really hate FB, I also hate ads.
I say shame on the ad company for not demanding more transparency.
FB charges the ad company based on how much the ad is shown. Why wouldn't the ad company imagine that FB could inflate the numbers in order to charge more?
I'm surprised it took this long for such an accusation to come up. It seems like a pretty obvious strategy that FB had up its sleeve.
It is in plane cite. And in the toylet. Up you're noze. With a rubba hoze. All in the name of Donald Goldenshowers Trump. And kids. Any gang.
Pot meet kettle Professional liars calling others out for lying.
Kill the Satanic monster Vladimir Putin today!
Donald Trump drank my last beer!
If you counted all the 18-34 year olds that are currently in Chicago, you'll find a number higher than the census reports.
Tourists, workers who live out of town, etc, could easily swell up to 4x the amount.
...
Federal Bureau of Information?
I have bought ads on Facebook for my project. When you are creating an ad you specify your audience. This can be geographic and / or demographic. As you refine your audience Facebook will show you the potential reach. If the reach is too low (say 70-80 year old males in zipcode 90210) it will warn you that your audience is too narrow and your ad may not reach many people, conversely if it is too large it will also warn you. So it is just a ballpark tool to give an idea of how your filtering has narrowed down the potential audience.
Here's the thing - they don't bill by the potential audience. They bill by the actual impressions and responses served (supposedly, but that is an entirely different matter). So the point is that inaccuracies in the potential audience does not have a financial impact on the person buying ads either way. In fact, if anything, inflated numbers means you will spend *less* money on your ads, because your audience is smaller than you thought and thus FB can't display as many ads.
Better known as 318230.
I remember when the web was first starting up, people were wondering which model it would follow: newspapers, television, radio, or libraries.
I suggested the library model since in my view, there was no money to be made off of the net in the way that would support a whole industry.
It seemed at first that I was wrong, and then these studies came out:
These tell us that 8% of the users account for 85% of the ad clicks, and these users tend to be from households with yearly income under $40,000.
In other words, advertising on the internet does not reach the audience it wants, but instead is mostly taken up by the people who spend a lot of time on the internet because they have no other form of recreation.
This has been exacerbated by the bots which take up 28% of internet traffic, the use of ad blockers, and the tendency of experienced people whose time is valuable to avoid the internet since its audience now seems like daytime TV watchers after the mobile era began in 2007.
Since those studies have come out, we have seen the big companies trying to jockey "we have a lot of warm bodies" into "our advertising is valuable," when all credible data suggests the opposite.
In other words, assume the crash position.
Alternative Right.
This is not a joke. Though well paid, complicit Facebook "reputation managers" and others in on the scam will try to claim it is.
This is outright, premeditated, flagrant, long term fraud. In other words lying for profit.
If it's true, and it probably is, then Zuckerberg, and the people under him who executed it, stole many millions of dollars by deception and should be doing serious jail time. For exactly the same reasons as Madoff and others.
It kills me that only now, at long last, someone actually spending money on the ads decided to do the math to see if they're getting what they paid for.
Every single time they prompt me about having seen an ad, I click "No".
Love to see bad news about this big mouthed billionaires.